Thursday, January 26, 2012

As Google has changed how people access and consume information, so must small businesses if they want to compete effectively. The goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to drive traffic to your website and therefore increase sales. It has become such an important of marketing that you can’t really ignore it and expect to be successful in business.

Here are some tips that can help your site get better optimized so that you can increase your sales.

·Picking the right keywords: One of the most important components of SEO is selecting the right keywords as optimizing for the wrong keyword will be leaving money on the table. You want to make sure that you pick keywords that have high traffic but are not competitive. Pick the keywords that people might type in the search engine, usually they would be two to four words.

·Use short and keyword- targeted titles: Make sure that your title tag is descriptive and reflects the keywords and content of the particular page. Your title shouldn’t be too long, up to 10 words, and should also include your business name or website.

·Detailed meta description tags: While ‘Meta Keyword’ tags are a topic of debate in the SEO world, what has remained is the frequent use of something called a “Meta Description” tag. This tag should contain an overview of what the visitor will experience on your specific page. This tag should be no longer than a couple of sentences. Omitting the “Meta Description” tag will result in the search engine quoting unintended parts of the page in the search engine results page.

·Use search engine friendly URLs and domains: When you purchase a domain, make sure that you purchase a domain with keywords that your clients will type in the search engine. By matching the domain name to the search phrase, you have a higher probability of gaining more visibility.

·Content freshness & age:The reason search engines exist is to provide you with great information. If your site doesn’t have fresh content on a frequent basis, they will bypass you in favour of a site that does have recent and relevant content.When you publish unique and interesting content on a regular basis, you get noticed by the search engines, who will place you

·Obtaining backlinks: The more links you get from other high rank websites, the better it affects your SEO ranking. A way to get backlinks is to provide great content and have people share it. The only reason people will want to link with you is because you have something great to offer. Don’t just link only to the homepage, but also make sure that you can get links to other pages on your website if they are relevant.

·Social media content and sharing: Recently, Google has changed some parts of its algorithm, called the Panda Update. One change that was supposed to help in search rankings was how many times people share a webpage or website through social media. Now, to get people to share, you must provide great content to be shared. Also, have your customers post reviews on major sites like Yelp, Zagat, Facebook and link back to your website.

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